The meanings of our life and religion

My relationship with God is the most important aspect in my life and throughout my time in college I have pushed myself to take classes that challenge me to dig deeper into religion. It’s a topic that intrigues me, because the definition of religion has so many meanings depending upon who you talk to. In class this past week we were able to discover that our individual views on religion differ but also cross many similar paths. The idea of spirituality and religion is something that many of us are trying to tackle. In McGuire’s chapter one of her book she brings up a point towards the end, that Religious organizations are losing their influence. The point was something that I think is quite true, people have become so spiritual and stopped being “religious” because it has become harder to feel at home in certain religious environments. Since we live in a very opinionated society people find it harder to coexist and believe in the same things. McGuire’s book has challenged me to think differently about religion in ways that I normally wouldn’t. In chapter two she brings up the concept of meaning and that as humans we create and hold our meanings for certain areas of our life. For those of us who are religious, she believes we use this as our motivation for the meaning behind everything. In a sense, I understand where she comes from because I have always thought of my life having meaning and that is because of my relationship with God. I do believe that he has laid out my path, but I don’t think this is an excuse for why things happen, I genuinely draw closer to him when I realize that my life is being led by him. Later on she connected the idea of our self-identity coming from these meanings we create for our lives. Thinking about how my meanings and my identity can very closely connect to a Christian from hundreds of years ago is something that is so unique about religion and something she got me thinking about. I am really fascinated by her discussions because I will now consider other people’s thoughts in the details of their life when they have different viewpoints than I do.

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Welcome to the SOAN 232 course site

This site contains information about the University of Redlands course: "Saints, Sects, and Society", led by Professor Jim Spickard. This General Education course explores the role that religion plays in contemporary American society -- and what is happening to that role as our society changes.

Please explore our site to see what and how we are learning.

Please also visit our course blog. Each week, students post at last two substantive, thoughtful, and public comments. One is based on what we have learned in class. The other summarizes an article from the news about contemporary religion.

Anyone is welcome to comment in response. (We will delete spam and comments that are impolite, irrelevant, or not oriented toward reasoned learning.)